Unclean Bodies, Unclean Milk

When colonialism taints modern breastfeeding narratives

Photo by Mehmet Turgut Kirkgoz on Unsplash

Breastmilk is liquid gold, not just for its superior content that no milk formula can ever match. It’s golden for the sometimes brutal process of keeping up the milk supply. It binds the mother’s entire life around the breastfeeding schedule. Lapsing doesn’t just mean hungry infant. For the mother, it means painful engorged breasts, clogged ducts, or further reduced milk for those who, like me, struggled to keep it up.

Personal disclosure: I was a mixed-feeding mom (when I still nursed my now three-year-old son). With my firstborn ten years ago, a daughter, I had low milk supply. So when my second, a son, came along, anticipating low milk supply I obsessively read and asked around and did everything I could realistically do to be able to breastfeed exclusively. Unlimited latching. Power-pumping milk. Galactagogues. Supplements. Still, at my rare best, I was able to breastfeed for only up to 70%. One less hour of sleep, or a bit more stress than usual, my supply would dramatically drop because breastmilk is emotional, especially mine.

I recognized the irony that stressing at my low supply only lessened it more, so I would relax, only to dry out completely. In my case, there was no surefire way to predict whether by the various methods I used I would…